Diary of Jayne
by Fourteen Hundred Hours
Summary: Jayne's account of a job he and the crew of Serenity take on. Not much else to say to that!


Don't get me wrong, I aint the kind of guy to go poncing off to some fancy party, or museum, or anything of that kind. So when I say I spent the whole of one gorram night at the theatre it aint what it sounds like. Hell, I wasn't even watching the piece of _gos se_ they were showing most of the time.

I thought it was just gonna be the usual kinda job. Get in, grab what we needed, and get out, preferably with a bit of a fight along the way. First thing that shoulda sounded wrong was the fact we had to steal a gorram pen. None of us asked questions at the time- client wanted a pen and was willing to pay a hell of a lot for it, and I wasn't gonna stand in the way of my 10%!

Second thing I shoulda noticed was that Inara had set us up with the client. Now I can deal with the double-crossing _niao se duh doo-gway _Badger tends to set us up with: you can beat 'em up good and proper so's they don't cross you again, but these fancy types with their mansions and manners – they're a tricky lot. One time I had my gun pushed right up against this guy's head and he starts questioning me about my morals!

It'd been shaping up to be a fine day, too. We'd docked on Persephone, found us a pub, and managed to get rid of the doc and his crazy sister. Sent 'em off to try 'nd buy some stripped paint, then took bets on how long it'd take 'em to realise they'd been had. Inara was off doing her whorin', so we didn't have to put up with her taking the high ground, and the preacher was… well, I guess he was off preaching somewhere.

We must've been there about two hours when Inara found us. She seemed mighty smug with herself too. Turned out the client she'd been ruttin' with had been looking for some guys to do a job for him, and she'd arranged a meeting with him and the Cap'n. As I said before, I should guessed something weren't right, but what with us in need of income and half of us kinda drunk we didn't think twice before agreeing.

Inara pointed us to the meeting place, which was in a bar just a few streets away from where we were. Cap'n took me and Zoe along with him, and sent the others off to look for the fugies, which apparently cancelled our bet. We found our man sittin' in the corner of the bar, looking as out of place as I would at one of his parties. Hell, the guy even had his hood up so's not to draw attention to himself, when everyone with half a brain knows the best way to be invisible in a bar's to buy a round of drinks. Guess these posh types must've less'n half a brain, which explains Simon and his _fong luh_ sister.

We sat down, Mal made the necessary introductions, and I flashed the guy a sight of my gun so's he knows not to try anything. Wasn't expecting him to shake his head and say "how vulgar". I could tell me and him were gonna fall out at some point.

The guy said his name's 'Carne', and seemed to think we should be honoured to be doing this job for him. He explained a lot about his life of luxury, how he gets everything he wants, how he's a pompous twat with _niou-se_ for brains. Eventually he got to the point- he wanted us to steal a pen for him. A quill, he called it, which apparently he was willing to pay a fair amount for. He said it was on display at the 'Theatre of Light' for one night, so we'd better be quick about grabbing it for him. Even had the idea to pass over a few coins right there as some sort of incentive. 'Course the _hwun dan_ forgot to mention 'on display' meant thousands of people would be tryin' to catch a glimpse of the thing, and that it was gonna have more protection than… well more protection than a gorram pen has any right to.

After we pocketed the incentive we figured we'd best be heading on back to Serenity to sort ourselves out. It sounded easy- we'd wait 'till no-one was about, grab the pen, and be flying off with a whole load-a money before anyone realised it was gone. Sounded easy 'till Inara felt the need to change that.

"He asked you to steal Shakespeare's quill?" she seemed pretty shocked by this. I didn't see what's so special 'bout this Shakespeare guy, so told her that. Inara shared one of those superior looks of hers with Simon.

"I'm sorry, I keep forgetting we're in a complete void of culture on this ship." Simon's voice always gets to me- if a voice could look down on someone his certainly would. I glared at him, which he ignored. Mal made him explain- turns out Shakespeare's some famous writer from Earth-That –Was, who wrote plays and poems and other _luh-suh_. Apparently one of his plays was on show at the Theatre, and to celebrate something or other his quill was also on display.

"I see. This might be trickier than we thought." The Cap'n just made the understatement of the gorram century. I reckoned it was gonna be a long night.

**Hope you enjoyed it! It's my first shot at a Firefly fic, so hopefully I'll get better with practice (and the more I watch the episodes over and over and over…) Sadly this has nothing to do with the awesome song by Breaking Benjamin, 'cept for the title. Funnily enough though, there's another Breaking Benjamin song called 'Firefly'…**

**Reviews much appreciated **


End file.
